Daily Archives: April 24, 2008

GeekWorld

A Cheap Lesson Overall

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58  bar falls 29.68  0mph E  dewpoint 57  Spring  rain

               Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

I have crossed a threshold today.   A while back my treadmill started to not shut off when I turned it off.  The treadmill kept going at a speed of 1.0 to 1.5 mph.  After calling NOW Sports in Arden Hills, where, it turns out, I bought the machine (when they were in Maplewood), Mike the repair guy called Landice.  They recommended replacing a harness that connects the dial to a rheostat and the computer board that controls the displays.  I looked at it, and it didn’t look  too difficult, so I ordered the $100 part.

It came.

Last night I took off the old harness and installed the new one.  No joy.  It didn’t work at all.  That was a step backward, but, it was not an unusual outcome when I set out to repair things, so I called Mike.  He said he’d call Landice and see if replacing the whole panel was the way to go.  After I hung up, I started to go upstairs and I noticed lights on the display panel.  Electricity!

That meant I might not be as far off as I thought.  I went back at it, jiggling wires.  It went off again.  Jiggled and moved some more wires.  A click.  A good sign.  Then, I found the right position for everything, turned the treadmill to on and it worked.  The elevation worked.  I turned it off.  It still ran.  At this point you might think I was unhappy, but I wasn’t.  This just meant that I had replaced the old harness with a new one and both were good.  The important thing here is that I replaced the old one with a new one and the damned thing still worked.  If that had been the  solution, it would have worked.  As it is, I spent $100 to prove to myself that I can work on things electronic.  A cheap lesson overall.

Art and Culture, Great Work, Weather +Climate

And the Soothsayers Predicted Snow

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55  bar falls 29.79 0mph SE dewpoint 54  Spring   light rain

                Waning Gibbous Moon of Growing

And the soothsayers predicted Snow.  Oh, no.  Really, not a big deal.  Slush is more likely.  The precipitation now is all good.  As the weather continues (generally) to warm, the combination of rising soil temperatures and moisture puts plant life on the quick track up.

Randy, from Randy’s plumbing, called.  He will come out Friday am to install the gas piping to the generator.  Center Point will come out on Tuesday afternoon to give us the bigger meter necessary to provide adequate gas to the generator when it works.  Soon we will have protection against power outages.  One more block for the retirement security perimeter.

Membership in Permaculture in a Cold Climate is another one.  As we make the transition here to more and more home grown produce and hopefully some home captured energy, we will reduce our need to leave the property for grocery trips.  All this moves us toward a smaller and smaller carbon footprint. Although, I have to admit, the steam room probably eats up more than we’ll balance for awhile.  Gotta figure that out one of these days.  When we get that Prius two years from now, our balance sheet will look better.

Allison has asked me to consider a short article on astronomy for the summer Muse.  She wants me to focus on the moon since there’s enough written about sun cults. (her language)  Made a quick survey of objects in the MIA collection.  If you thrown in those with stars, there are over 100 objects that have either a moon or star connection.  Finding a good 8 or 10 for a Moon and Stars tour would be easy.  This plays to an interest I developed in archaeoastronomy while I belonged to the Minnesota Astronomical Society.  We’ll see what she wants.  More later.